Monday, 01 August 2011

Let's put Lowndes County on the Clean Economy Map!

Among regions, the South has the largest number of clean economy jobs
though the West has the largest share relative to its population. Seven
of the 21 states with at least 50,000 clean economy jobs are in the
South. Among states, California has the highest number of clean jobs
but Alaska and Oregon have the most per worker.

A per-county map is included, on which you can see North Carolina
and Atlanta, but nothing in south Georgia.
Let's put Lowndes County on the clean energy map!

The gigaom article recommends:

To help boost the clean energy economy even more, the Brookings report
suggests that Congress could pass a national clean energy standard, put
a price on carbon, use the government as a chief customer of cleantech
goods (Obama has been strong on this), find more ways to help proven
clean technologies pass the so-called Valley of Death, as well as
increase funding for basic science and early-stage high risk projects
(like the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program).

Sure, we're not nearly as big as those places, or so local "leaders" remind me.
So let's find some projects of our scale that we can do, and let's do them!
A real leader might say, as
Mayor Julian Castro of San Antonio did, that
renewable energy is

“...the nexus between sustainability and job creation. Every now
and then, perhaps once in a generation, there presents itself a moment,
an opportunity, for those cities that are willing to seize it, to truly
benefit the region for generations to come.”

That opportunity is right here in south Georgia, waiting for us to seize it.